Knuth's Volume IV Preview Available Online

ahto writes: "The first section of volume 4 of Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming is available for peer review (and the $2.56 finder's fee for every typo is still there :)." Knuth's series-in-progress made a lot of people's lists when it came to assembling the perfect collection of library books for computer science; now you have a chance to make the next one better. If you can find any mistakes, that is.

Comments

recommendations of other books

[mj6798]

If you don't get the hang of Knuth's books (I don't), here are some alternatives that serve both as good introductions and excellent references:

• Abelson and Sussman: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. This book covers a lot of ground when it comes to programming, implementation of programming languages, and the use of abstraction in software development.
• Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest's algorithm book is an excellent modern exposition of algorithms and concepts in algorithm development.
• Russel and Norvig's "AI -- A Modern Approach" is an excellent textbook covering logic, search, and AI.

Also very relevant to modern computer science are the following books:

• Duda, Hart, and Stork's "Pattern Classification" is also a book computer scientists should know, but rarely do.
• Strang's "Introduction to Applied Mathematics" covers elementary material in applied math that every scientist (computer or otherwise) should know by heart.
• Gershenfeld's "The Nature of Mathematical Modeling" is a neat, if somewhat quirky, book at the intersection of mathematical modeling and computer science.

If you have recommendations of other introductory books with a similar style, say on automata theory, string algorithms, number theory, combinatorics, etc., please do share them.

Re:knuth is how old?

[Khalid]

Here is Don Knuth home page, it answers some of you questions. He has retired from his job, and has decided not even have an email address, as he wants to finish his Encyclopaedia. He considers it rightfully as the work of his life.

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/

Notes on the text

[ciurana]

This is not a draft of volume IV. This is a draft of a section of one chapter in volume IV, namely section 7.2.1.1.

Dr. Knuth writes: "This is a section of a long, long chapter on combinatorial algorithms. Chapter 7 will eventually fill three volumes (namely Volumes 4A, 4B and 4C), assuming that I'm able to remain healthy."

This particular section deals with generation of combinatorial patterns and was released for public review in hope to winnow the most egregious errors before it's released; the subject is so extense that Dr. Knuth felt this was one of the best ways to improve this 67-page section.

I've read the first four or five pages and it's impressive, as always. Heavy on the math from the first page. Either way this will make for very enjoyable reading (if you're in hyper-nerd mode).

Cheers!

E

TAOCP's Legend

[robbyjo]

It's been a long wait since the first three book of TAOCP came out (in the 80's I suppose). Knuth said it would be a 7-volume series. We always wait for the rest to come out. Here's volume 4. You could check out what will come out for volume 5-7. The contents for volume 4 is there too (including the erratas of vol 1-3).

He said that he'll spend his retirement to write the rest. Wow. Check out his homepage, probably you could help him. If you could give him a "significant suggestion", he'll reward you for 32c. If only ask slashdot offer the same prize for each highly modded post. :-)

Caveat emptor: His book is not for the faint-hearted. It's full of math & logic -- but it's wonderful.